Ready for this? Here’s how it works: you tell us what icons you need, and then we design them together with SoftFacade51 (which recently created the beautiful Smashing Retro Icon Set2) and release them for free. And to make it a bit more interesting, we’ll smash six commenters and forum participants with original nerdy gifts.

To participate, just suggest an idea for a great useful icon set in the comments to this post or in this forum thread43. Details are below.

How do I participate?

Participating is very easy: just let us know what icon set you would like us to design (and, if possible, what specific icons the set should contain) in the comments to this post or in this forum thread43. The set may contain at most eight icons.

On the 20th of March, we’ll select the most popular ideas and requests and publish a poll in our magazine, inviting our readers to vote on their favorite theme. Once it’s done, the creative minds behind SoftFacade51 will carefully design the set and submit drafts of its work in progress to the forum, documenting the design process. Hence, you can observe how the set is created and, if there is something you would like to change, communicate with the designers directly. You can keep track of updates on Twitter @smashingmag6 and @softfacade7.

Awards

A total of six commenters and active participants in the forum will be awarded Mac Dock Icon Throw Pillows8 (see images below). The winners will be picked randomly and announced in the forum and on Twitter after the theme of the icon set has been chosen.

Finally, we’ll release the set as a free download, which you can freely use for personal and commercial use.

Smashing Magazine Is All About Our Readers

At Smashing Magazine, our readers have always been our highest priority. We respect our readers; we listen to them; we are always open to their suggestions; and we always appreciate constructive criticism. This is why we created a number of ways to interact with our readers:

We created a friendly Smashing Forum11 to make it possible for our community to exchange ideas and help each other in problem solving.

We are using Twitter12 to share useful resources and knowledge with, and get feedback from, our readers (e.g. deciding which article should appear next), and we now have almost 20,000 followers.

We are preparing the Smashing Book13, in which our readers can decide what topics will be included.

And now we would like you to decide what icon set we should design and release next, especially for you. We hope to get great feedback from you, and we would like to thank SoftFacade for its cooperation in this event! Please spread the word, too; we would like the design community to decide what would be most useful and interesting for designers out there!

The Smashing team loves high-quality content and cares about the little details. Through our online articles, Smashing Books, eBooks as well as Smashing Conferences, we are committed to stimulating creativity and strengthening the web design community’s creative forces.

David

JessicaB

A good set of account icons would be great. There’s a lot of good free icon sets out there (including many folders, adobe, browser icons), but it seems as though a lot of the new 2.0 style icons are more geared toward desktops, rss, and social networking.
I think account icons would be something not so commonly found. Good examples would be: log in/ log out, edit my info, etc.
The ebooks suggestion below is also great.

marcus

parsifal

I’d like to see sea based icons. They are quite rare, I must say, so I have much trouble to find sea creatures, like seahorse, shells, tridents & anchors anywhere. So, I’ll go by that.
There sure are a bunch of social icon sets out there and we don’t need another one.
Although, what I’d really like to see is one Tweety [from Sylvester & Tweety] twitter icon.

Josh

dagobert renouf

MAKE A TUBE BOX,
I need it for the website I’m working on and I can only find square box, we sell wall decalls so we send it in smashing tubes, so do a TUBE set guys :D to put awesome icons on our shipping infos page !

Jeremy Gallant

Tim Murren

I would like to see a set of icons for folders that organize my different design work. Examples: Freelance, Full-Time job, Web, Print, Fun, Test Projects, Finished Work, Current Work, or Upcoming Work.

Megan

I like the idea of folder icons for different types of projects. As an artist I have a lot of trouble keeping all my files organized. Maybe some things like photography, vector, pdf, web, graphic etc. I think that would be wicked cool =)

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Jennifer

I love art and history so maybe some sort of sweet Indiana Jones inspired themed ones: excavation of an artifact (pot) for ‘search’ function, a stack of old library books with candle for ‘archives’, a broken column for ‘help or repair’, maybe an old scroll and pen for a ‘blog or communications’, an aged blueprint possibly for ‘site map’, ancient coins coming out of a purse for ‘purchase’, an old decrepid mine entrance with danger sign for ‘caution’, aged lock for ‘protection’, a shovel, trowel, and paintbrush for ‘tools’, vintage airplane and jeep over an old globe for ‘travel’, nailed up crate with bits of straw poking out for ‘security’, old tent for ‘home or accomodations’, water bottle & exotic fruit for ‘food or rest’, big boulder rolling down hill at you ‘caution’, fedora & whip for ‘accessorizing’, an old sepia tone photo of an explorer/adventurer in front of pyramids in a scrapbook for ‘images’, well you get the picture.

Dreitausend

Do me an Icon for Searchplugins (the browser-thingi in the topper-right). And for Ideas (no excamation mark), Music (no notes), Video-Games (no gamepad), Party (no dancing people) & blogging (no pencil).

Matt Gio

Jason

Each month of the year (12 total) would be nice for blogging. Could be used in displaying the date for posts. Each month would exemplify the month mood/holiday/or weather. Could be traditional icons or could be larger format with room for the day of the month to be placed overtop.

Matt

Pat Denny

I also concur with the blog/forum type icons. Different sizes would be nice too.
Those would be awesome.

Though I’m loathe to admit it, I’d also like some “sexy” smiley icons too. Something along the lines of the GTalk square set, perhaps. I just want a set that doesn’t look like they were made in 1999, or like I probably downloaded a botnet virus along with them.

George McKnight

A good set of ‘Weather Icons’ wouldn’t go a miss, which could be possible given the 8 max requirement. If this isn’t a viable suggestion I may give it a go myself, but would love to see what the experts provide. Cheers, George ‘dod’ McKnight

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marina

I would love an iconset for a freelancer web, I’m starting as freelancer after 5 years working for a company, and I think that have some icon for: home, portfolio, contact, about me, free for job, busy,… don’t know exactly, but somethink like that could be cool.

Thanks!!

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Richard Leik

What the web development community needs is a slick icon set to replace the hugely popular FamFamFam silk pack.
It’s an amazing set, but it could definitely be spruced up with gradients, shadow effects, etc.
Making all the icons the same size increases appeal. Try to keep colors similar to silk pack, since it has worked very well.

Kevin

You should make a icon set to be use for warehouse management system. From different size truck for delivery, different box/envelop style/size to the content of a shipment (tv, computer, books, radio, furniture, dishes, bicycle, etc.) JUST SMASH IT DOWN!

Robb Clarke

A set of customizable icons would be amazing. Fairly high res as well. PSDs would be swell.
– Photo Gallery/Portfolio (with interchangable photo)
– Home (house)
– Contact (telephone)
– About (person/people)

Mike Sammartano

I am a science teacher and have been looking for a high quality icon set for my site for ages. It seems most science/nature related icons are really “cliparty” and poorly deisnged. I’d love a nature set with some great astronomy, weather, geology, instruments, atoms, etc icons.

Jon Hartmann

A definitive set of “basic” icons in the size range of 24 to 48 pixels. The FamFamFam Silk icons have started to become ubiquitous, but they are only 16×16 pixels. A basic, reusable set with icons for folder, forward, backward, up, down, user, etc that are in an unobtrusive color scheme would be something I’d grab and use over and over again. I have plenty of seasonal RSS and Twitter icons… I need something I can use everyday on real applications. Silk does this at 16×16, but lost of sites need larger icons.

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Kaspar K

Hmm…. i have been trouble for months and i have tried and looked everywhere but i still haven’t found nice and sexy poker icons…. :) I know gambling is bad… But i usually play poker 2-4 times a week so it would be best if most of those poker rooms had sexy clean icons :D
Some ideas: cards, chips, cash, girls, gold and so on :)

gdrs

Lelik

Soheil Alavi

A set of general simple (pixel) small icons, not very glossy to use for the navigation menus ( to put in the side of the links such as “My Account” – “Setting” – and these kind of menus that are not the main menus, but they are for sub menus.

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Hollis Bartlett

Elias Castro

I’m developing a nice financial application for a credit company, I’m not a designer, so I do really appreciate, if you create a nice Financial Icon set, with a safebox, a bank icon, and stuff like that. That would be great!!!!!

David

Luis Mora

I suggest an iconset for a web app for an specific business… Maybe a hardware store… For example it can includes an invoice icon, an order icon, a product icon, a category icon, and others icons like customers and suppliers,etc…
Maybe could be a good idea join all these in one set because I didn’t found in internet.
Well.. Is only a suggestion :)

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samuel Eglington

i think a portfolio set is needed.
home,profile,photos,artworks,design,web design, illustration,animation,music,blog, contact detail, mobile,home phone, email,mail Address.
these icons need to be in a range of sizes, form 32×32, 46×46, 64×64
and a range of colours so the users can mach any layout to the icons,
also a full social icon set including.
myspace, skype, facebook, twitter, IM, youtube, beepo, digg, and of course smashing magazine
these also need to be in a range, form 32×32, 46×46, 64×64
i think the icon design needs to be adaptable to any site layout,
its no good if you have a site that uses mostly dull colours like browns and grays
to only be able to find bright “red” icons. so the icon colour range needs to be considered to mach any page colour layout.
also the look of the icon needs to be match be able to site so perhaps a as well as a clean neat icon with nice gradients one to be developed with a more grungy/ hand drawn look and aswell as a basic one without any gradients.
the perfect icon set is within reach, and you could be the ones to do it.

Tom van Altena

I think we can all agree that Apple has done quite a good job overall in designing their icons for our docks, so to really test the Smash skills: I would like to see you try to re-design and better the current standard dock icons!! But still in a general theme, so no weird horror or grunge or easter or christmas theme.. good luck!!

Mini0n

I would like to see some fancy yet simple navigation icons, for a vehicle tracking website.
Like two or three vehicles, a placemark/house, some traffic signs and traffic lights, a warning sign… They would fit nice on my current project.

Vidal Graupera

sylph

hey i’d like to request an icon set for a custom xmb theme for psp, although that disagrees with the requirement that we can only request at most eight icons. too bad
so how bout a gaming icon set for a gaming site then?
with sections for
gaming news
game reviews
game previews
top games
game rankings
gaming forum
downloads (wallpapers,gallery etc..)

Jennifer Chiappisi

As WordPress is used moreso for CMS applications by web designers, I’d love to see either an icon-set for the inward facing WordPress, ie. icons for their menus in the case that you decide to customize the inside of WP for your clients.

Another great option I’ve seen posted here has been ECommerce icons. Most web designers will need to use that type of icons every now & again and it would really be helpful.

I would say, since these Icons are available for commercial usage, I’d rather see them actually be able to be used in web or graphic design rather than just for replacement dock icons or things to replace your standard icons for the Adobe line.

fermie

I’m currently doing a project management system (which I’m planning to make an open source version), and since I’m more of a programmer (back-end, logic) rather than a designer… I’m having a freaking hard time with the graphics that I need, specially icons. So a project management icon set will surely be useful!

Skinny.

I reckon a set of icons based on graffiti and vandalism would be great, loads of different things like a fat marker could be for illustrator or a graffiti writer as the icon for msn messenger, something along those lines!

trendez

Since most of SM readers are designers (I guess :p), so it would be a great idea to design custom icons for designers portfolio. By custom I mean wouldn’t it be great if we can change colors, self picture (from my works icon, or about me icon), etc. If the icon will be provided in psd, ai format, that would not be a problem. And about the theme of the icon, I think sleek/smooth icons would be great.

thumbshit

sirisha

I need some icon sets to be used regularly by my friends and colleagues and seeing which they should be reminded of power saving, fuel saving, ozone deplition efect, save plants and plant more trees :)

Abdulsalam Alasaadi

champ

I always thought that there wasn’t so many sets of mini icons (16×16,32×32) and all just look the same, we didn’t have many choices when it comes to building a real application. (famfamfam, milk icon, etc) It starts to get boring in the process. :-D

Azhar Madia

Roy

I’d really like to have some cool ecommerce-icons like carts, some arrows, “money”, more details-icon, creditcard-icons, etc. I know there are millions of them already but really no’one has created a “full package” yet.

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Graafvis

I’m working in a scrum enviroment since a few weeks and i need to create a visual workflow of this scrum method. No icons to be found anywhere though. Icons i really could use are:
– scrum master (person)
– sprint
– breakdown chart
– backlog
– daily scrum meeting
– product owner (person)
– product
– time estimate

PrabhakaranG

Since most of the user here are designer & some Developers/Writers, I would recommend for designing next-generation icon sets for displaying in their portfolio:
1. Home
2. Portfolio
3. Services
4. About me/Profile/News
5. Design
6. Development
7. Art
8. Contact

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speedcu

I`d also need a set for a CMS. We`ve created a new one and some pretty icons for the web backend would be great. What do I need …
– edit
– new page / new image
– delete
– folder
– arrow (next, previous)
– login
– logout
– save

:) thx and have a nice day!

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Niklaus Gerber

Please please please Smashing Magazine – Design an icon set treating the subject of magic (card magic, slight of hand etc) with playing cards, rabbits in hats etc. It is not existing anywhere so far and I did not get arround to do them myself.

Chris

Ecommerce icons. Create/Add, Read/View, Update/Edit, Delete, Confirmation (that something has been changed), Warning for validation messages, A what does this mean icon, usually seen by the side of forms such as your bank CV2 number, Basket, Save, Payment cards etc.

Valeriy

Cathyt

This comes bang on time. I have to design an icon that expresses “EMBED”, as in embed that video link on your pages. I’ve looked around and so far have found: a cinefilm with an arrow pointing down (CNN) and the code “</” from Vimeo. But we need an EMBED ICON that can become a standard!!
thank you Smashing People!
c.

Sledziu

Scott Brown

Some nice smooth e-commerce icons would be good. A bit of uniformity between e-commerce sites can only be a good thing. Aids usability, breeds confidence and recognition in the user etc.

I notice a few requests for portfolio icons. Surely if you’re doing a portfolio you should make your own! There are enough blog and social network ones these days as well, grunge, 3D, web 2.0 styles etc, they’re all out there.

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Nathan

Laurel Natale

I think a set of Marketing icons would be nice. Internet Marketing, Print Marketing, Viral Marketing, Guerilla Marketing, Buzz Marketing, and so forth. These could be used by web design companies, freelancers, portfolios to show type of marketing used in examples or case studies, in marketing and design blogs, or to give the readers a little hint about the type of article they will be reading about. I haven’t seen any yet on the web, and I think a collection would be nice.

I haven’t seen anything like these yet, and I think web design companies could use them as well as freelancers, bloggers, etc.. They could be used as service icons, or in portfolios and case studies to demonstrate type of marketing used. Marketing bloggers can use them to give hint as to which type of marketing the article is talking about. I think a lot can be done with these.

Francois Botha

I’d actually like a set of icons that relates to the services an ISP would offer, e.g.
* E-mail
* WWW hosting
* VoIP
* Hardware setup
* Web login
* The above for both business and personal packages.
* Contact us, FAQ, etc
* Anything else you can think of
I imagine that these icons could be based on web.png of the Flavours icon set.

Andrea

Some MAD icons would be great! Icons are always pretty and happy! Every time my users send my forms with useless trash, so i had to do a super thight validation… so then, if they still continue doing errors even now, i wish i had some MAD icons to show them together with the errors :D

Chris Trygstad

What about some information technology hardware icons? Like servers, storage, RAID arrays, racks, tape libraries, icons that can be used to communicate the massive datacenters that will be fueling the cloud computing everyone is talking about out there.

Claudiu

Amanda

I would love for someone much more artistic than I to create icons for the non-profit with which I volunteer. RSS, social networking – but with a pb&j sandwich, lunch bag, cookies, chips, bagel, coffee, etc. – that ties into the way we serve the homeless. We’re called Food For Thought (I know, not terribly original), and we’re based in Toledo, OH.

Jelle

I’ve been looking for a slick consequent icon set I can use on my personal site which has a dark background. I write articles and have a lifestream going on, so my menu bar includes sections as home, articles, lifestream, contact, about. Maybe an additional matching RSS icon would be nice. And since lots of people have portfolios, a photos and a services page, that would suit perfectly as well.

tobi

– fax
– telephone (which is not a mobile or some call center thingy.. so maybe just a nice standard phone)
– an according mail icon ( to suit the set)
– some “download” icon which is not looking like “file sharing”
– so make them clean..no shiny web2.0 look
– maybe just highres grascale so everyone can change the colors to fit the needs in PS

that would be nice.. and some pdf,doc,xls… icons to put behind the links via css

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Craig

Nqy_Nik

Heidi

How about a set of icons based around copywriting / editing / proofreading? A couple things that could be included would be:
1. A red pen.
2. A computer keyboard.
3. Some various proofreading and editing marks, arrows and parenthesis in red, etc.
4. A submissions box – like a black desk tray, with pages in it.
5. A pair of reading glasses.
6. A dictionary and / or thesaurus.

Tom Webber

Remiss63

I need icons to use in the Mac OS X dock for folders such as Applications, Documents, Downloads, etc. Typically I get generic low contrast folder symbols with light icons indicating their function. Alternatively, I’ll get the image of a stack of icons with the top most Application visible over the others which is particularly confusing.

Viewing these items in the dock in a screenshot is positively confounding. Who can help?

phiyo

Manon

Would love icon sets for small businesses as I think in this economic climate, small businesses great design more than ever. For example, an icon set for restaurants, an icon set for a gallery, icon set for a boutique, etc.

fesh

John

I’d love to see some funky development icons, something I could use on my dock and in my company intranet and wiki. Either vanilla flavoured to cover the type of development – or more precise to the application we actually use. So very hard to find anything out there for these types of applications!

Ricardo

I was about to say this or those icons… I have a better idea. A complete Gnome iconset. Why? Because it has TONS of icons that can be used in TONS of places (and also Linux). A complete Gnome iconset in SVG format would also mean that we could continue the job since we would have access to the sources (imagine more colors, and then more icons if needed) plus would also mean that translating to other formats would be not only possible but easy too.

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Willem

Biffy

Something I found lacking in most available icons sets is a “map” icon.
I’ve recently been working on a social networking site with Maps but couldn’t find ay decent map icons.
With location-based sites/services becoming common, it’s always nice to have some icons related to them.

Spy

An “All-you-need-in-web-set” with all icons you usually need for webdevelopement would be nice. Everyone uses famfamfam-Icons – which look reallly great – but I get used of it – to used (I hope you understand what I mean).

Max

As mentioned before, a set of content edititing icons could be very interesting. Icons will be used for both sides, back office and front office for editing content, comments, forms, forums, etc.

Why this set of Icons? Because smashing magazine has the ability to convert these borring icons into something very amazing and original that all people would be integrate in their own website and web apps.

Srikanth AD

Hi,
It would be great if you people can design an icon set for ‘social mood indicators’ like Happy, Tired! etc which include logos of popular web resources like Twitter, Facebook and so on.

These icons can be used for representing the current mood of a person on a specific social networking site.
(Ex: ‘Tired’ on Twitter, ‘On the move’ for Facebook, ‘Busy with work’ for Myspace etc)
I hope you got my point!

Roc

I haven’t found a good “open map” icon (for links that open a location in google/yahoo/mapquest) that would be nice.
How about a “random” icon where there is a finger on a world globe that’s spinning :))))

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Sean Hudson

I need very specific icons for use in a Map based Travel-Tourism website. We filter map results in 6 clickable category buttons: All Types, Scenic, Accommodations, Restaurants, Bars, and Business (General types of business).
We also need a “?” icon for roll-over help balloons.

Max

Xevo

Maybe something like a community icon set, based off a japanese style, and for example the user icons, harajuku/cosplay kids or just anime figures. The home icon with a japanese styled roof and instead of stars, something like rice balls with happy (kawaii) faces?

Well, I know you’ll guys can come up with something good, so I leave the rest to you. :)

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346

Maciej Gowin

orbi

I LOVE the SoftFacade styling
If i were able to create swanky icons like that i would make some I need over and over again and can never find them in a set together. this means i have to buy a couple of sets in istock or not get the consistency i would love. If I’m in this position so are others.

The following set would help me with UI schema diagrams, explanations of concepts to other people, explanations of concepts in my portfolio…. i would use them until they became dog-eared!! One – eMail Two – An office/ Building to represent …. an office or building :) Three – A Cloud (Internet/ Ethernet/ Network cloud) Ive never seen a nice one of these Four – A mobile Phone (Im getting excited just at the thought of the set … yes that could be viewed as sad but it works for me :) ) Five – A Desktop PC Six – A Laptop Seven – A Server Eight – And most importantly!!! A user, oh yes, a user the centre attention :)

Lucky 11 Studios

Monika

Well I think you guys should design icons for ad/design agencies. Like icons with leaflets, business cards, billboards, corporate gifts – everything an agency would possibly need to present their offer on the website. I tried to find them for a long time but no luck. There’s been almost everything to this day – twitter icons, rss icons, law icons, web icons, car icons – but nothing for agencies. And since it has a lot to do with web desing – it would be awesome thing to download!

Harpal Singh

I’ve few clients who provide video shooting services with choppers shooting a wide aerial view. I’m not good in illustrations but I always wanted to create these ideas – aerial view from a helicopter, man hanging on side of helicopter with his camera, aerial view of earth, aerial view of horses racing or anything on those lines.

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